Revisiting Solid Edge and Synchronous Technology
You might remember some time ago that SolidEdge made a huge splash with what it called Synchronous Technology. At the time, I got to use the software, and even got a day of training on it. There were things about it that were very impressive, and things that weren’t so impressive. Synchronous Technology, or ST for short, is essentially direct editing – the ability to move faces of the model directly without the need to edit features. The main selling point of the technique is that it is “historyless” – playing off of parametric software users fears surrounding dealing with a history-based feature list in a complex model. SolidWorks has some tools that work in a direct editing sort of way, but nothing that really compares to the functionality found in ST.
I’ve written a fair amount on the pros and cons of ST. Follow the link and browse the entries from the bottom up. To summarize it, I think ST is great, but I would not give up history to get it. My best case scenario would be to combine the strengths of history and direct edit techniques, along with some history tree management ideas. I think some of this is going to show up inSolidWorks sooner rather than later, and it may even be showing up in Solid Edge in their soon to be released ST3.
The hype around the initial release of ST was enormous, especially the hype created by the media (people who get paid to talk about software but don’t really use it), but it was unclear if anyone actually took a critical look at it to see if there were any limitations. When actual users were let loose on the software, limitations became apparent. To me the most serious drawback was that once a face of the b-rep model was consumed, getting it back is far more difficult in direct edit than in history. Another way of saying that is that if the design intent changes, in some cases you are left with some pretty primitive methods to achieve what you are looking to do. I came away with the impression that you had to have very good understanding of b-rep modeling in order to understand what kinds of edits would work, and which ones you would have difficulty with. The hype around ST soon faded, and disillusionment set in for Solid Edge customers. ST was being hyped at that point in the same way that Cloud is being hyped now by a different CAD company. While ST did definitely have some advantages over history based modeling, in my opinion it was far from something you could just rely on 100% for everyday modeling tasks.
Claims that ST or more generally direct edit was the “future of CAD” were a little bit of the boy who cried wolf. You hear that future claim every time someone resurrects a failed technology from some previous decade. Direct edit and Cloud both fall into that category. Not to say that both technologies won’t play some role in the future of CAD, just that I don’t believe either one will exceed say 20% usage.
After having done some reading around the web, it seems to me that the ST was integrated better into NX than it was into SE. In SE you are pretty much limited to prismatic shapes, but not so for NX. While I do foam at the mouth a bit when I think of having a full license of NX, an office of my size can’t really afford that kind of thing. This is why you don’t see a lot of user run blogs based on NX – it is primarily found in larger companies that deal with much bigger ticket products where that huge price just disappears into the overall project cost.
Changes worth noting
The big news these days is the renewed energy Siemens is putting into Solid Edge again. They have a new fellow in charge (Karsten Newbury), and many of the old guard are gone. Also gone is the claim that ST is going to fully replace history modeling in a couple of years, even ST apologists are saying that history is still the only way to do some things. I’m hearing (from people I want to believe) that Siemens is paying attention to what users are saying, and that Synchronous Technology 3 is going to be all that the original release could have been. I think it was a mistake to put up such a rigid wall between ST and history. Direct editing on its own has limitations which have made it a second-place technology in a two horse race. I’m not sure a new coat of paint and a well written press release is going to change that. I think the answer to a really great product is not a revolutionary change that turns the world on its ear, but rather an evolutionary change that looks at two seemingly polar opposites and sees in them some compatibility. You can’t ask power users to give up the undeniable power of history, and you can’t relegate Solid Edge to be used only by the Spaceclaim target audience (downstream 3D data consumers). Someone has to take the step and combine the two.
How? I think I laid some of that out in this post a while back. It would have to do with history tree management – mitigating some of the shortcomings of SolidWorks implementation of history-based modeling.
Anyway, this post is more about Solid Edge than SolidWorks.
Siemens may actually be putting some resources behind trying to get users interested in the Solid Edge Product. Along with the ST3 release, Siemens is conducting a “Solid Edge Productivity Summit Tour”. As I understand it, Solid Edge does not have the base of user groups that SolidWorks has, but this tour might be thought of as the equivalent of a new version rollout training session.
Anyway, if you have any interest at all in this, check out the Solid Edge Synchronous Technology blog. The ability to use ST in “smaller chunks” may mean that they are starting to meld ST with history. I really believe this is the best way forward for both technologies. If you are tired of hearing about your CAD vendor with its head in the clouds, you may find some relief in hearing from a different vendor who is at least trying to solve CAD problems rather than licensing problems. If one of these events is in your area, check out the website and tell them you’re coming. Attendance is complimentary, and they provide lunch. The event agenda is here.
Then come back here and tell us how it was.